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RWW RECOMMENDS: THE BEST SUBSCRIPTION MUSIC STREAMING SERVICE Published: 08/06/12
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When's the last time you purchased a CD? For an ever-growing number of consumers, the last time they pulled the cellophane off of a CD jewel case is but a distant memory. Many high school-aged kids have never had the experience, and likely never will.  Instead, music consumption has moved online to channels both legal and not. Peer-to-peer file sharing, MP3 stores and cloud music lockers have been joined by all-you-can-stream subscription apps. These services are quickly becoming a huge hit with mainstream consumers, and may even help reduce piracy. But which one offers the best experience?  In terms of pricing, there's essentially no difference between the key players. Rdio, MOG and Spotify all offer limited free accounts, which they ultimately hope to convert to premium, ad-free, mobile-accessible accounts for $5 or $10 per month. That leaves these services to duke it out over their feature sets, and it's a close fight.  When you stack all of these services up against one another, Rdio and Spotify both come out on top, for slightly different reasons.  Rdio and Spotify are, for the most part, remarkably similar. They both have huge libraries of music from all four major labels and many independent labels. Both offer apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone, and each has a presence on miscellaneous other digital entertainment devices. They both integrate with Facebook, if "frictionless sharing" is your thing.  They also make very good competition for one another. Each service has a feature or two that bests the other provider in some way. Spotify: An Infinitely Extensible Library of Music  Spotify's biggest advantage is its ability to merge your local music collection with its massive cloud-based library. It would be impossible for any streaming service to offer access to every song in existence, but Spotify does the best job of letting the user plug the gaps. Syncing one's music through Spotify can eliminate the need to use the platform's native music player and even free iOS users from the shackles of iTunes. Another major perk of Spotify is its third-party add-on apps. Late last year, the company opened up its new platform so developers can build HTML5-based apps that run within the Spotify desktop client. While the apps have yet to be ported over to any mobile platform, the functionality they offer is extremely promising.  Rdio: Superior User Experience  While Spotify has certainly captured the bulk of the available buzz since its U.S. launch last year, it doesn't entirely outdo Rdio.  What the two-year-old startup lacks in library extensibility, it makes up for with exceptionally designed apps on mobile and the desktop. Unlike Spotify, Rdio also has a Web app, allowing users to enjoy the service in the browser without having to download software.  Mysteriously absent from Spotify's apps is a way to easily navigate one's collection by artist or album. Instead, browsing of content is based on playlists and search. It's functional, but inconvenient, not even bothering to borrow from a convention that has existed since the first iPod. Rdio doesn't make this mistake: The music is arranged by artist and then broken down into albums, as it should be.  Rdio also appears to have certain popular albums that Spotify lacks. Pink Floyd's studio albums come to mind. Overall, Spotify has a bigger selection of music, so this is another thing that more or less balances out between the two, depending on one's tastes.

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TOP 5 SPOTIFY APPS FOR MUSIC DISCOVERY Published: 01/12/12
Spotify wasn't built for discovery. The Swedish music streaming company realizes this and instead of trying to natively bake a zillion features into its service, itlaunched a platform for third party developers about a year ago. Spotify's app directory now features almost 60 HTML5-based add-ons for the service's desktop client. These apps perform a lot of different functions - some are social, w...

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Gadget Name: ReadWriteWeb
FACEBOOK LOOSENS ZYNGA'S LEASH - CAN CHANGING THE RULES SAVE ZYNGA? Published: 30/11/12
If this were a certain social network, Zynga and Facebook could probably agree that their relationship status is: It's complicated. Two new SEC filings on Thursday revealed that the social game-maker and the social network are putting a little distance between themselves, amending some rules of their multi-year agreement to give both companies a bit more autonomy. What’s Changing In The SEC Amen...

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Gadget Name: ReadWriteWeb
CHILL DIRECT: A FARM SYSTEM FOR VIDEO DISTRIBUTION Published: 30/11/12
What's the biggest hurdle to getting people to watch your film or video? Getting it in front of them in the first place. Unfortunately, your options are limited. Chill Direct, a new service fromthe social-video siteChill, hopes to expand those options and act as a new farm system to get content to TV, theaters and film festivals. If you're as well-known as rising comic Louis C.K., who has famous...

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Gadget Name: ReadWriteWeb
TIME WARNER CEO THINKS YOUTUBE’S $100 MILLION CONTENT INVESTMENT IS "CUTE" Published: 30/11/12
Much has been made of Google’s foray into original content with its $100 million investments in its bid to compete with television. But as Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes pointed out at this week’s Business Insider’s IGNITION conference, Google’s content investments are essentially chump change - nowhere near enough to challenge Big Media's established players. “To put it in perspective, we...

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Gadget Name: ReadWriteWeb
ANOTHER GLOOMY SALES REPORT ADDS TO WINDOWS 8'S TOUGH WEEK Published: 30/11/12
Just how well is Windows 8 selling so far? A month past the launch of Microsoft’s revolutionary operating system, data released this week seems to add credence to the idea that consumers just aren’t adopting Windows 8 as fast as the company may have hoped, with negative implications both for the Holiday shopping season and beyond. In a report released Friday, StatCounter found that by November...

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Gadget Name: ReadWriteWeb
GOOGLE BUYS BUFFERBOX TO MATCH AMAZON'S LOCKER FOR CONVENIENT SHIPPING Published: 30/11/12
Google has acquired Canadian parcel delivery start-up BufferBox Friday for an undisclosed sum. BufferBox is like a PIN-protected P.O. box for packages that solves the problem of missed deliveries. It's a service that mirrors the Locker serviceAmazon began offering earlier this month. Google's acquisition of BufferBox signals that it's serious about going head to head with Amazon on retail. "We’...

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Gadget Name: ReadWriteWeb
IDC: DEVELOPER DISINTEREST COULD KILL RIM & WINDOWS PHONE Published: 30/11/12
There is no doubt, 2013 is going to be a very interesting year for the mobile industry. Apple and Google will continue to strive for worldwide domination with iOS and Android - making it very difficult for other competitors to squeeze out profits. The day of reckoning may be at hand for old school mobile players like Research In Motion and Microsoft even as manufacturers like Nokia , HTC and even ...

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Gadget Name: ReadWriteWeb
IT HAPPENED TO ME: MY SMALL BUSINESS WAS HACKED! Published: 30/11/12
Last September, shortly after the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, a company tweeted me that they were going to make our site, SmallBizDaily.com, their “small business resource of the day.” My joy was short-lived when the next morning they tweeted that my site had been hacked. I quickly checked (it was still early morning on the West Coast, where we’re located) and sure e...

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Gadget Name: ReadWriteWeb
WHY DO TECH COMPANIES DOMINATE "BEST PLACES TO WORK" LISTS? Published: 30/11/12
When the Great Place to Work Institute released its 2012 World's Best Multinational Workplaces list this month, ranking the world's 25 best employers - tech companies ruled. High-tech companies grabbed 9 of the 25 slots including 4 of the top 5. It's a nice feather in the caps of Google, SAS, NetApp, Microsoft and the other winners, but beyond bragging rights, is there a point to this or any simil...

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Gadget Name: ReadWriteWeb
ORACLE HAS PROBLEMS TELLING THE TRUTH IN ITS ADVERTISING Published: 30/11/12
Oracle seems to have a problem with truth in advertising. Since April, the tech giant has had to pull three ads that claimed Oracle computers performed much better than IBM's. Each time, Oracle offered no proof of its claims and the ads were dropped after IBM complained to the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Better Business Bureau (BBB). This sleazy behavior, called "strategically stupi...

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Gadget Name: ReadWriteWeb
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